


One Year Later (and later)

by nameless_bliss



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Anniversary, Bittersweet Ending, Cecil-centric, Drabble, Episode 25, Established Relationship, M/M, Memories, More Hurt Than Comfort, One Year Later, Present Tense, Separations, Slight Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers, Spoilers for episode 49B, Trophies, very little comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 00:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1878894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nameless_bliss/pseuds/nameless_bliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil had been so used to living alone. It shouldn't be this hard to come home to an empty apartment. </p><p>Post-Episode 49b</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Year Later (and later)

Time isn’t real.

And Cecil knows that.

It’s a construct, a massive abstract that people collectively allow to define their lives. It’s arbitrary, and immaterial, and in many ways unnecessary.

But somehow, it still has value. It still feels real.

Even though Cecil understands that time only holds as much power as he allows it, he is still allowing it to hold quite a bit of power. More than he would like. More than he would like to admit.

Because if time _is_ real, a year is a very big piece of reality.

He realizes this as he slowly uncoils his fingers, watching his keys slip between the digits. He realizes this as the keyring catches on the hook next to the door (the hook that had been attached to the wall after the seventeenth time he had lost his keys in the sofa cushions, in his pocket, in the oven, and in the flower box on the windowsill). He realizes this as his thumb brushes across the second hook, next to his, the hook for the second set of keys.

The one that’s empty.

One year later.

Cecil can hear cliches in his mind. Things about how life is ‘the same, yet somehow different’. About personal growth, and reflection, and hindsight being twenty-twenty. He knows they are cliches. But he thinks about them anyway.

He thinks about the things that are the same. Most of the furniture. The colors of the walls. The small pile of things in the far corner that need to be put away (the things _in_ the pile have changed over time, but the pile’s existence is a permanent fixture by this point). The patch of stars visible through the open curtains. The smell, barely perceptible, but as pleasant as ever.

It’s the things that are different that he tries not to think about. The extra shoes in the entryway closet. The beakers in the kitchen sink. The pictures on the mantlepiece.

But worst of all, it’s the flickers of memory that are attached to every damn thing in his sight. As he walks past the bathroom, he sees a flash of the evening spent frantically trying to stop the pink slime oozing out of the sink. In the living room, it’s the time he stubbed his toe on the recently-teleported armchair in the middle of the night and had melodramatically fallen onto the rug and refused to get up until the pain was eased away. He can only manage a glance in the bedroom, seeing the day when breakfast had been spent in bed. And lunch. And dinner. And nearly every moment in between.

Cecil has spent most of his life alone. It never bothered him. At least, never enough to wish it were some other way. Living by himself was just a fact of his existence. He didn’t consider himself lonely. With so many people in his life that he loved, how could he be lonely, just because they didn’t live under the same roof as he did? His home and his life have always been two very separate ideas. Night Vale was his home; his apartment was just a vessel.

Yet somehow, a few months - a few precious months - have managed to outweigh an entire lifetime. Because somehow, after just a few months, coming home to any empty apartment feels undeniably wrong.

Cecil doesn’t want to sit down. He knows the fabric of the sofa will only fill him with more memories. Movies. Drinks after dinner. Afternoon naps. Wild nights. Comforting nights. Skin against skin. Heartbeat against heartbeat. He knows he won’t be able to ignore any of it once he sinks into the cushions.

But he doesn’t think he can keep himself upright. His eyes keep darting upward, even though he keeps telling them not to. He knows that will make things worse.

“Don’t do it,” he mumbles to himself as his gaze trails up the walls again. “Don’t do it,” he repeats, as his legs give out and he falls against the sofa and it’s too late because he’s looking up and he sees it.

The banner is hanging above the bay window, illuminated by the lamp and the glow of the city outside. Unsurprisingly, it looks so much smaller and cheaper and messier than Cecil had imagined it when he first nailed it into the wall. When he had first stepped off of the footstool in the first minutes of dawn to admire his work, it had been a masterpiece, a silken piece of pure art. Now it was a strip of paper, scrawled in his messy handwriting with the three half-dried markers he had found in the junk drawer.

_‘WELCOME HOME, CARLOS!’_

Every doodled heart, every gold star sticker he had stolen from the station’s Intern Progress Chart, every cartoon smile carefully replicated from his own expressions now feel like cold stabs somewhere in his gut.

Part of him wants to leap off of the sofa, claw his way up the curtains, and tear the banner right off of the wall. To rip it into pieces so small that they won’t be able to put themselves back together in his memory.

A different part of him realizes that’s stupid. Because the banner isn’t wrong. It’s… mistimed. It’s still relevant. It will still be seen. He just put it up a little too early. Time is weird, so that’s an easily forgivable mistake. Carlos will come home. He’ll see it. He’ll see it and he’ll smile and he’ll laugh and Cecil will blush because it really does look like an elementary school art project but it will be okay because Carlos will be _here_ and that means everything will be okay.

That part of him is more logical. But it’s so much quieter.

One year later.

Cecil has to laugh at himself.

It’s a quiet, mirthless laugh. But it’s necessary. Because it’s funny, in a horrible sort of way. It’s funny and horrible because it’s so similar.

One year ago he was sitting at his desk, waiting for Carlos to come back even though he knew he couldn’t, fighting tears, holding a trophy.

One year later.

Sitting on his couch, _their_ couch, waiting for Carlos to come back even though he knows he can’t, fighting tears, holding a trophy.

Cecil blinks too quickly because his vision is clouding over. He sets the trophy in his lap, suddenly feeling too tired to keep his fist closed around the small base.

It’s smaller than the first trophy, and much simpler in design. It was a sentimental gift; he knew the meaning would come across even if it wasn’t lavish.

‘#1 Appliance Levitator’. Two months ago, ‘Appliance Levitator’ had been smeared with clay, carved, and painted, so it now reads ‘Anniversary’ in Cecil’s best attempt at good penmanship.

‘#1 Anniversary’

_‘WELCOME HOME, CARLOS!’_

The place under the footstool where his boyfriend’s glasses had hidden the day they grew legs.

The side of the closet that’s only for labcoats.

The alarm clock on the other side of the bed that goes off two hours before his own.

The other side of the bed.

The one that’s empty.

The home that’s empty.

The first tear slips down, landing in the golden cup of the trophy. Cecil smiles, remembering the first tear that had slipped into the last trophy, one year ago. Back then, all he could think about were the things he no longer had the chance to say. The things that had been important, but he had been too afraid to say before. The things that he hadn’t realized were important until they were taken away from him. And here he is, one year later, filling the trophy with tears again, overwhelmed by things he can’t say.

‘I love waking up to the smell of burnt toast because it means you’ve tried to make me breakfast.’

‘You sound dumb when you sing in the shower.’

‘I don’t want you to get new glasses because your crooked ones look _right_ on your face.’

‘I wish you’d finish chewing before you start talking.’

‘I want to meet your family.’

‘I never want to wake up without you next to me.’

‘I’ve started bringing your Relaxed Nighttime labcoat to bed because it smells like you.’

‘I intentionally burned my toast this morning.’

‘I miss you.’

‘I love you.’

‘Come home.’

But he is safe. They are safe. And it has been so long since they could say that for certain. That is so much to be thankful for, so much to celebrate, so much more than they’ve had. It’s fine. They’ll be fine. He knows they’ll be fine. He’s only known Carlos for the smallest fraction of his life, and shared his home for a fraction of that time. This - being alone at the end of the day - should be normal to him.

He hopes this will never feel normal to him.

He vaguely realizes the morbidity of seeing his tears collect in a puddle inside the trophy. There’s enough now that he’ll have to dump it out in the sink. Just like last time.

Something buzzes on the sofa, smothered beneath Cecil. It frightens him enough to knock the trophy out of his hand. It lands on the carpet with a dull thud, and he watches with bitter fascination as his pooled tears soak into the fibers.

Another buzz.

He barely registers his own movements as he reaches into his back pocket to pull out his cell phone. He’s still watching the damp spot on the carpet. He vaguely thinks that he should soak it up before it can sink far enough to nourish the sentient mildew in the floorboards. He has to wipe his eyes several times before he can see clearly enough to read the alert flashing across his screen.

New Messages from: “Carlos <3”

‘Hi Cecil =)’

‘Still awake? Can I call you?’

One year later.

His heart still leaps. He still feels blood spread through his body like warmth under his skin. He is still holding the trophy.

He knows things are wrong. He knows that things aren’t okay. He knows the ache will get worse, not better. But as he taps open his phone’s keyboard, he knows that _something_ is right.

‘That would be neat.’

**Author's Note:**

> Let's face it, I'm still devastated about that episode.  
> If you want something a little less soul-crushing than our current canon, check out my other work for some shameless Cecilos fluff.  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing of Night Vale, or its Characters. I just do this because my heart is in pain and I thought writing angst might help with that.


End file.
